Many educational social media page groomers ask this question: "How can I groom faster?"
I have a suggestion. Start timing yourself. Most of us always keep our cell phones nearby, and the clock on our phones has a stopwatch feature. Using it and jotting notes on how long various aspects of the grooming process take, you can illuminate areas where you may be able to shave a few minutes here and there. Those minutes add up. I recently timed myself as I groomed a fifty-pound Golden retriever/poodle mix.
This dog comes to see me every seven weeks and is always very dirty because she has a wonderful life. She hikes, swims, and romps in the woods. It always takes three shampoos before the water runs clean. I have a recirculating bathing system, which saves a lot of time, though. I also always condition the dog. The full bathing and conditioning treatment took me 16 minutes on the day I was timing.
After her bath, while she was still in the tub, I used a super absorbent towel to pull as much water as possible, followed by a terry cloth towel, because removing as much water from the coat as I can will shorten the time spent manually drying. I put a towel on top of the table to prevent water from spraying back as I use my high velocity dryer (bonus, it softens the sound of the air as it contacts the tabletop.) With a Happy Hoodie on the pet to protect her hearing and absorb moisture, it took me 19 minutes to get her completely dry.
After brushing and combing her thoroughly (her owner maintains her well at home, so she only had a few tangles), I clipped her all over using a Wahl 0 comb. I use a vacuum system attached to my clipper, which speeds things up considerably, but I was surprised to find that it only took 9 minutes to get the clipper work done on this girl.
From there it was simply a matter of recombing, trimming feet and any "sticky outies" and scissoring her face. When I turned the stopwatch off and took the dog off the table, I had spent one hour and 20 minutes grooming her.
Timing each segment of the process showed me that I was working very efficiently on this pet. Still, on other dogs, I find I spent too much time accomplishing a task because I kept getting distracted from what Iwas working on and moving to a different area of the pet. This can be a terrible time suck. Something else that I have learned affects my efficiency is that I am prone to surfing on my phone with one hand while I dry with the other. Not focusing on my work is a bad idea and slows me way down.
By timing your work and noting the time spent on each job, you can tighten up how you work and streamline your efforts, thus shortening the time you put in on each pet you groom.
